Not a nightmare before Christmas
by Marlowe97
Summary: "You're not haunted by the war, Doctor Watson. You miss it." - John Watson has things to think about before Christmas. (Set somewhere in the middle of "His last vow". )


_a/n:_

_Hello folks. Another first for me, another show I got sucked into. This little nighttime-contemplation will sit as background for a larger story I'm writing now, which I hope will ever see the light of day._  
_But whether the other one will fly or not, I wanted this here out in the open. So. Enjoy._

_Warning: I don't speak Dari or Pashtu. I used the internet for the few words I needed, so if I did it wrong, please tell me and I'll change it._

* * *

"_You're not haunted by the war, Doctor Watson. You miss it."_

How very true, John thought while he was lying awake thinking at the ceiling of his old room in Baker Street. How very, very true. He did miss it.

Oh, not the dying and shooting, the being shot. He didn't miss the sand – god, he could never miss the sand that crept into his clothes and under his skin until he'd itched all over. Nope, not that. Sometimes, he missed the country, its aching beauty with its spectacular sunsets and haunting mountain-scenery, though that mostly happened on miserable, foggy days.

No, but sometimes he missed the excitement and the danger and the sheer feeling of being alive, of knowing in his bones that he was alive. Knowing by the ache in the knee, by the sweat on the skin, the pounding in the head and the terror in the spine that yes, still alive. Still breathing. Still thinking. Still there.

* * *

It hadn't always been like that. He'd started out as "just a doctor", his university-bills paid by the British government in exchange for his service in the Army. He was smart enough – no matter what Sherlock claimed – to get through the studies with relative ease, and physically fit enough to keep up with his basic training. And when the Government had decided that yes, they would invade Afghanistan – so notoriously known for being easy to conquer, as the Russians would know – he'd felt compelled to go.

Had he had a choice? Oh yes, of course. He'd not felt too worried about it, though, because there hadn't been anything to keep him in London at the time. No permanent girl and his sister had always had a very … testing personality. The two of them had always clashed. Harry had always been argumentative, even when they'd been children, and her most used argument had been and still was that 'women can do it too, if not better'. John had never disagreed, but he'd never seen the point in yelling at everybody who thought just a little different. Harry though… she'd go on and on, growing fiercer by the second, throwing out example after example of smart, successful women who'd been denied their rights all through history.

Well, she most certainly was right. She just never accepted that people didn't listen to you when you started annoying them, and she had a knack of doing just that within seconds. It made her even fiercer, which put people off even faster and… well.

John hadn't liked arguing. He'd preferred to keep the peace and still did even now, especially between people he actually liked.

He could swallow a lot of injustice and insults – real ones or ones that were thrown just out of carelessness. And while Harry would have fought tooth and nail – quite literally sometimes – John would just stand by and let the storm pass over.

He'd lick his wounds in private, later, or see if he could salvage anything from the debris. It had put his sister near madness that he wouldn't stand up for himself. But if he'd ever be inclined to be truly nasty to her, he could point out who, between them, was the one with the drinking problem and if there might not be a better way to get a point across than yelling and screaming and being considered a freak.

Sherlock wasn't the first one in John's life who wore that title.

In his youth, John Watson had been "the freak's little brother" and now he was "the freak's friend" – and he was surprisingly all right with that.

In a basic way, John was a follower. He'd always followed. Followed his fierce sister to keep her from being beaten up, followed her to London when her sexuality had made living in the country too limiting, followed the nice fellow from the Army who'd told him how to become a doctor without funds, followed the Army to Afghanistan.

And now, he followed Sherlock Holmes. And he'd followed Mary Marston on their first meeting, into a café and right at her table and, much later that day, into her flat and her life.

John felt a smile creep up his face. He was still seriously angry – no, not angry. Hurt.

And angry. Yes, ok, he was very angry.

But there was no denying that Sherlock had a point when he'd said that _John_ had been the one to choose Mary. _He_ had felt the familiar thrill in his bones whenever he was near her, that same thrill that he'd searched for in so many women with no luck and had only managed to find in a tallish bloke with pale eyes who sadly didn't do anything for him, attraction-wise.

People had claimed – maybe still did, even now – that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were a couple made in … probably some strange place far away from Heaven, but not yet Hell. And while he had been a bit annoyed about what it did to his chances with women, he'd seen that they weren't far off.

Sherlock Holmes was magnetic. He either repulsed you, or you got stuck with him. John had been stuck from the first few words they had spoken, hooked by the brilliance and the pure honesty in every harsh word, and he never could get away from him for long. When people saw that, he could easily understand why they'd think he was Sherlock's mate in more ways than one.

It might also be that no-one who knew Sherlock could imagine anyone putting up with his personality if he or she didn't at least get some sex out of it.

It wasn't that John would have minded falling into a love-affair with Sherlock Holmes. He'd probably be mad in a week's time if that happened, but to be perfectly honest, being in love with your best friend would be a good two-for-one deal.

But John was very much straight, and Sherlock was very much… well, Sherlock.

Always settling with second-best for a woman wouldn't work, John'd known instinctively. And he hadn't wanted – still didn't –to be alone forever or live with a platonic, possibly asexual flatmate and try to find sex and touch and gentleness elsewhere. Empty sex, empty touch and empty gentleness.

That had seemed too frightening an idea, but the closest he'd come to a woman who he could even contemplate living with had been Sarah, and she'd taken a new job in Birmingham and John hadn't felt the urge to keep a long-distance relationship. She'd not made much effort either, so he guessed they were okay. She'd sent a card for the wedding.

With the exception of Sarah, anyone John had gone out with had been … well. Dull. Unremarkable. Nice. And ultimately not able to hold his attention for long.

Until Mary Marston had come into his life, and some days, when he was in an forgiving and good mood, John wondered if she'd been able to hook him in like she had if Sherlock hadn't been pretending to be dead at the time.

Then he remembered how well the two of them fit together and how much Mary delighted in Sherlock, and he knew that yes, she would have.

Usually, that was around the time he remembered how she'd shot Sherlock and pretended to be someone she hadn't been, and John never went much further with his thoughts lest he got too furious and might do something he regretted. Like call his wife and yell at her over the phone.

Anyways.

Before Afghanistan, John Watson had been a patient and calm man, believing that he'd do his time for Crown and Country, then settle down and become a very happy, retired man.

It hadn't quite worked out that way.

Oh, sure, first he'd been just an ordinary Army doctor, sewing together idiots who couldn't use their knifes right, treating embarrassing ailments of very personal nature and now and then, digging into soldiers' insides to find a hidden bullet and ending the days playing cards with his colleagues and friends.

Not too bad, all things considered. He'd been nicely entertained and happy to be content.

Until _that_ day.

* * *

John was just dealing with the minor illnesses and injuries from the community; no emergency in sight in the troops and one of the directives in this war was to make as many good impressions on the people in the Helmand-region as possible.

He was smiling down at the little boy on his mother's lap with a broken arm now safely in plaster when a man stumbled into the clinic, frantically babbling in Dari about his wife, help and outside.

John only knew some basic Dari and even less Pashtu, but he recognized the man as Jubran Qaderi from when he'd deliver vegetables and merchandise to the soldiers. He'd been able to calm Jubran down and when the merchant was able to remember his own jumbled English, it came clear that there had been an accident with their car and his pregnant wife Maheen was stuck inside.

Of course no-one was to go anywhere alone with one of the local people; John knew that and knew the reasons very well. But this man was clearly distraught and John was sure he genuinely feared for his wife's safety.

Still, he made an effort and ordered two Sergeants to accompany him, grabbed his vest and gear and of course his medical bag and followed Jubran outside.

"_It's not far"_, Jubran assured them, or at least that much John understood from him. He was right, it turned out, when they rounded a corner and there was the car which had apparently lost a tire and had screeched into a wall. Maheen was inside, tears streaming down her face and she was talking, reaching out to her husband and anyone who might help her. Her belly was keeping her from sliding over to the driver's side and John could see blood on her forehead and wide, unevenly dilated eyes.

_Concussion, contusions, probably shock, no signs of problems with the child yet,_ his mind analyzed without conscious thought and John quickly turned to his bag so he'd be able to help her.

Twisting, he only heard a fraction of words, _Ne! Jubran ne! _and _Lotfaan, Jubran_, which were expected in a way, but he also caught that one word that sent chills down his spine.

_Talak_

Trap.

He looked up, right into her face with her eyes widening in horror and he was still watching Maheen when her head exploded and red and grey and white splattered all over the windshield and his own face.

John wasn't processing much after, though he heard yelling and screaming, the sharp sound of the sergeant's guns. He was still staring at Maheen's dead eyes when someone yanked him up, and it was like he was suddenly awake after having slept too hard.

Everything was in motion. People were rushing from the scene so they wouldn't be caught in the aftermath - _smart of them_ - and there was a lot of noise, but around him, there was a bubble of calm.

Ten men in typical Afghan clothing had them surrounded, rifles pointed towards John and the sergeants - _I don't even know their names!_ and Jubran was wailing and probably praying on his knees until a harsh bark from one of the Afghan guns ended his misery.

"On your knees! Put gun down and on your knees."

The speaker was pointing at the older sergeant, who set his face into stubbornness. John knew without a doubt that this would end in disaster, but before he could speak, someone grabbed him harshly, yanked his head back and forced a gun into his mouth.

_Please, God… if you're there, please. I don't want to die here. Please_ went on an endless loop in his head, but he could still see the soldiers reluctantly lower their weapons and settle on their knees in the dust.

"We need medical. We take Doctor here."

_Jesus, oh no, Jesus!_

One of the men spoke up then and another one laughed, and they marched John backwards, all the while holding the gun in his mouth.

_Please, no. Jesus… Please_

They pushed him inside a van, and the last thing he actually saw before they pulled a black bag over his face was the two sergeants being dragged into another vehicle, still alive but bound.

_Oh God, thank you, they're not dead_, and that was when his brain shut down in sheer terror from the smell of the bag - _blood, brain, sweetness, blood, blood, blood_ - and he tried to calm his breathing to something resembling normal.

* * *

When they arrived at their destination – it felt like two days ride in a stuffy van with nothing to see and only water every now and then – he was stripped of his gear and outfitted with a shackle around his ankle. At gunpoint, he and the two sergeants were marched into a cave and chained against the wall.

John had just managed to calm down so far that he could breathe normally and assess his two compatriots – _fine, nothing damaged, shaken but not stirred _- when one of their captors appeared again.

"Medical? Stand," he ordered, and it didn't take more than the hint of the gun towards the older sergeant to make John obey. "Come with. You want soldier live? Come."

There was no choice. John followed.

* * *

They put him in front of a ruddy metal-table that was covered with a cloth, padlocked his chain to the table-leg and put his medical bag on a second, rickety wooden table. It wasn't hard to imagine what they wanted, and soon enough two terrorists - abducting doctors and soldiers and shooting pregnant women? Definitely terrorists - carried in a man who was moaning in pain who was bleeding from a wound to the abdomen.

They put the gun back against John's head and with shaking hands, he took out the scalpel and motioned for them to bring him water to wash his hands.

The first cut into the injured rebel had been crooked and rough. John had trembled so hard that he couldn't continue, couldn't even hold the scalpel steady. The terrorist had been young, so very young and so very injured. But John hadn't been able to work, he'd wanted to but…

They had brought in the younger sergeant, stood him right before John's eyes and held a gun against the young _young, so young_ man's temple.

No words had been spoken, no threat had been needed, and John Watson had stopped shaking. It had been the last day his hands shook under pressure.

* * *

They had been taken for about two weeks, during which John had been cuffed against the steal-table, sometimes fed, often watered and occasionally let out to relieve himself. He'd learned the sergeants' names – Ian McCay and Roy Giller. He'd stitched and sewn and operated so many men that he'd lost count of them and only the scalpel, the work had kept him upright.

That, and the knowledge that without his cooperation, his two fellow captives would die.

They'd become friends during the evenings when the light was too low for John to work. Ian had been joking frequently, trying to make John and Roy laugh. With Roy, John had talked long into the nights, listening to the stories of his wife and his young boy, their dogs and how he'd initially wanted to breed them but his detachment to Afghanistan had put that on hold.

"_Flat Coated Retrievers. Nothing smarter you'd ever find in the Retriever-family,"_ he'd said, and John had taken it as truth since he never had a dog and didn't even know how the Flat Coated ones looked like.

The two soldiers had been furious the first days, had refused to talk to John because of his too trusty nature. He'd tried to explain that he'd known Maheen and Jubram; that he'd trusted them because of that and not just followed them blindly, but he'd also known that they were right, that it was his fault they were in this situation.

The day Ian had finally cracked his icy demeanour, John had operated on five people and was too tired to even sit. He'd not eaten from sheer exhaustion and McCay had tried to coax him to rest and eat.

It had been Giller's words, though, that had roused him.

"_If you drop dead, they will kill us,"_ he'd said, and John had known it was the truth.

* * *

One day, there was a fight outside. Yelling, screaming and shots, and inside the cave only one guard remained, just a boy of maybe fifteen and he held the shaking gun towards Ian and Roy. John saw them close their eyes in acceptance of the inevitable.

He'd been at the operating table, too far away to help his friends and not sure if calling out to the boy would make him turn or make him pull the trigger.

In the end, it didn't matter. A shot from the cave's entrance killed the boy and a group of men stormed in, yelling at John in Dari to drop the knife.

It turned out that there'd been a lot of bad blood between their captors and this group of peasants from a nearby village, and after they won the squabble, the villagers didn't quite know what to do with the three Brits.

They knew very well what to do with the remaining kidnappers, and John watched all his hard work be executed outside in the glaring sun. He didn't feel much, though.

Luckily, the villagers were smart enough to understand that killing them would not be seen kindly, and in the end they settled for tying John, Ian and Roy up and driving to the next military outpost, where they just kicked them out and left.

It was a US camp, but it could have been much worse.

* * *

In the end, John hadn't been injured or harmed and apart from a very unpleasant scar around his ankle and two blokes who from then on called him "Doctor Frost", nothing but the occasional nightmare remained.  
Well, that and a very severe reprimand for not following protocol and endangering himself and two others. He would not rise above the rank of Captain if not for some miracle, but John hadn't felt too bad about that.

In the end, those days in captivity had formed John Watson more than any other. If he would be forced to explain why he was like he was, why danger thrilled him and gave him a rush like nothing else could ever do, he'd probably say that he'd been overdosed in that cave.

Overdosed on adrenalin and from there on, whenever the level dropped he'd get into withdrawal with shaking hands and phantom pains and unending nightmares. As a man of medicine, he knew full well that it didn't quite work like that, but it was close enough.

After the abduction, Captain John Watson had changed. Stopped following behind like a happy Labrador and instead became a Terrier, always in the middle of a melee, be it a bar-brawl or the sound of gunfire. He'd been too attracted to danger, too drawn to the fire to be confined in an Army hospital.

He'd never told his psychologist about that. John didn't know why but had always figured it was none of her business.

His Commander at that time had been shrewd enough to understand John's problems and instead of sending him off to a shrink and maybe get him discharged, he'd reassigned him to another division under the command of Major James Sholto. And he still didn't know what Sholto had done or how he'd done it, but somehow, the Major had moulded and formed him into the John Watson that was currently lying in bed: so addicted to danger that he couldn't sleep well after long weeks of normality. Too addicted to the thrill to not be drawn to Sherlock Holmes and apparently too addicted to adrenalin to meet a _nice_ woman and instead had married an ex-assassin.

He smiled in the dark.

He hated to admit it, but Sherlock Holmes had been right.

He hated even more that Mycroft Holmes had seen it first.

After years of trying to, looking for and not finding a woman that could give him the same thrill Sherlock bloody Holmes gave him, after losing even that last person to provide him with his fix and slowly tumbling down into a serious case of depression, living in a world where the colours had all faded to grey and his senses had turned to those of a dead man, John had been looking very fondly at his gun.

Cold steel against his head still shook him to the core, and to even imagine the feel of a barrel against his palate made him sweat too much to even hold same gun steady but he'd put it there anyway. John hadn't wanted to be dead - but the life had been drained out of his world and on very, very dark days, he'd needed it to feel alive again.

Even if the colours it provoked were crimson and red, orange end yellow, sharp and painful it had been better than the dull nothing surrounding him.

And then he'd met Mary, and the gun had lost its appeal.

Sherlock was right.

There were two people in his life that actually thrilled him, and he knew without a doubt that he'd never be able to give either of them up.

* * *

With a sigh, he grabbed his phone from the bedside table.

_**I'll be there. Send me your parent's adress**_

_**End**_

(_Ne! Jubran ne! = _ "No! Jubran no!" - _Lotfaan, Jubran_ = "Please, Jubran" )


End file.
